José Gomez, a cadet of the ancient Brazilian family of that name, began life with a fine physique, ample mental endowments, and a high social position. He was the heir-expectant of a valuable estate, and no pains were spared upon his education. As he grew to manhood, however, his habits became such as to excite the gravest apprehensions as to his future, and by the time he was thirty years of age he was a reckless libertine, gambler, and spendthrift. Finding that his source of supplies was about to be cut off by his family, he obtained large sums of money by means of forged paper, with which he fled from Rio Janeiro to Lima, Peru. His whereabouts were not discovered for a long time, but when the information was received, the Brazilian Government made an effort to obtain his extradition. He was living in fine style in Lima, under the assumed name of Juan Sanchez, and, in some way, he was warned of his danger. Before any steps had been taken to expose or arrest him, he perpetrated another series of forgeries, by which he obtained a large amount of money, and then wholly disappeared. The aggregate of his forgeries was so great that a considerable notoriety attached to the case, and the facts were published in full in the leading newspapers of this country. About the time of the great rush to California, after the gold discoveries there, a gentleman known as Don José Michel appeared in San Francisco, where he lived in regal splendor; indeed, his extravagance was so great as to make him conspicuous even among the reckless throng who filled the Golden City. After wasting a fortune with a prodigal hand, however, he suddenly vanished, and, although little was known positively on the subject, it was commonly understood that he had swindled a number of bankers and capitalists by worthless notes, drafts, and checks, many of which were wholly or partly forged. The men thus defrauded kept the matter quiet, both because they were ashamed to acknowledge how easily they had been imposed upon, and because they hoped to facilitate the capture of the criminal by working in secret. The incidents were related to Senator Muirhead in a casual conversation with a friend who had recently returned from the Pacific coast, and the description given of Don José Michel tallied exactly with that of Juan Sanchez and José Gomez. By an odd coincidence, the month after the departure of Don José Michel from San Francisco, a brilliant gentleman of nearly the same name appeared in Quito, Ecuador, where he pursued a course so exactly similar in character to that of Gomez, Sanchez, and Michel, that it was not difficult to imagine that that ubiquitous person was identical with the elegant Don Pedro Michel who created such a brief excitement in Quito, terminating with forgery and a hasty flight.